New Release Round-Up 06-30-23

Lucinda Williams - Stories from a Rock N Roll Heart - Highway 20 Records
Three-time Grammy Award winner Lucinda Williams releases her highly anticipated new album Stories from a Rock N Roll Heart (Highway 20 Records/Thirty Tigers). 2023 is a special year for Williams: she turned 70 in January and on April 25th released her long-awaited memoir Don’t Tell Anybody The Secrets I Told You (Crown, a division of Penguin Random House LLC). The last couple years have been challenging for Williams. In 2020, a tornado damaged her new home in Nashville, followed two weeks later by the beginning of the COVID lockdown. Later that November, Williams suffered a stroke that partially impaired some of her motor skills on the left side of her body, forcing her to learn to walk again and taking away her ability to play the guitar. Stories from a Rock n Roll Heart marks a triumphant return from one of our most revered artists and songwriters. Williams is in great form as heard on her new single “New York Comeback,” written by Williams, Tom Overby and Jesse Malin, with Patti Scialfa and Bruce Springsteen on backing vocals. Stories from a Rock n Roll Heart was produced by Williams, Overby and Ray Kennedy, who also engineered. The album includes guest backing vocals by Jeremy Ivey, Jesse Malin, Buddy Miller, Angel Olsen, Margo Price and Tommy Stinson.

Neko Case - Wild Creatures - Anti
Wild Creatures is a career retrospective album containing twenty-three of Neko Case’s most impactful tracks from her discography, and will now be available on CD and 2x LP. With a career spanning over twenty years, she has famously collaborated with The New Pornographers and Case/Lang/Veirs in addition to releasing many critically acclaimed solo albums, including ‘Fox Confessor Brings The Flood’, ‘Middle Cyclone’ and most recently 2018’s ‘Hell-On’. Gathering power year after year, Neko sings with the fierce abandon of a newborn infant crying in a basket in the woods. Since escaping the labels of country and Americana, the gorgeous train-whistle vocals of her early career sit submerged in her later style, where their ghost can appear any minute. When her voice jumps an octave, it’s almost visible, like sparks at night. “I never knew where I wanted to go or what I wanted to do with my voice,” she says, “but I just wanted to do it so bad.”